Tara's Reflection on the Chapter Presentations

    The first presentation in a class is always the most difficult one. That’s why it is important for you to do your research and practice your speech. Practicing your speech helps you to memorize the material you’ve researched. This is perfect for a person like me, who is writing a blog about the material I learned for my class presentation. I and my partners were in charge of informing the rest of our class on Chapter 3 of a book called “Comm6: Speech Communication.” The material is fresh in my head as if I just learned it. Now, I will share some of this information. I will also share what I thought of the other groups’ presentations.

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GIF reads "You Got This."

    I was the first of my group to present and I covered the introduction to the topic “Intercultural Communication.” It starts off with the term “Culture”, which is basically a way of life. In the book, I learned that when people of two different cultures try to communicate with each other, but find it hard, they are experiencing intercultural communication. Luckily, there are ways to be an effective intercultural communicator. You must be able to understand what culture means, identify different cultures, and realize how differences in cultures influence communication. The book also taught me about dominant and co-cultures. To put it short, dominant culture is the learned norms by the empowered majority group. Co-cultures are the groups within a larger culture. I also learned that people can identify with more than one culture and that is called biculturalism. Usually, people who are bicultural tend to code switch, which means to switch back and forth between cultural norms depending on the culture they are interacting with. One simple example of this is changing the language they speak for the time being to accompany the one that they are around. 

    In my partners’ sections of the presentation, they mostly talk about other types of cultural identities. One important part was race. Race is defined as a group of people who have been singled out often on the basis of real or alleged physical characteristics. Another part of the presentation also explained the difference between sex and gender. Sex is defined as the biological differences between males and females, such as the differences in genitalia and genetic make-ups. Gender is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male or female. Our presentation wraps it up by sharing how we can further increase our communication skills. One of these skills is adopting an appropriate attitude, which involves being open-minded. We can also develop culture-centered skills, which has to do with putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and adjusting your communication to fit others and the current situation. 

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    Everything I’ve stated so far is very useful and important information, but it’s not the only information I learned. The other groups have taught me equally as much, if not more. Since it’s so much information, I will talk about what I thought about how each group presented the information. There were two groups named Group 2 and Group 3. Group 2 covered the topic “The Nature and Types of Groups.” This group used very precise language and excellent visuals that helped the speakers to explain their parts of the presentation effectively. An example of this is when a presenter, who was talking about the different types of families, used a graph that broke up the types into 4 sections. The graph used arrows to separate and compare at the same time as he verbally broke down to the viewers what it all means. Group 3 covered the topic “Group Leadership and Problem Solving.” They placed a majority of the verbal part of their presentation into their PowerPoint. This is good for people who have a hard time following along and prefer to read while listening, but I personally was not one of these people. Other than the information provided, it made me very happy to see the energy and creativity they put into making their powerpoint look tidy and well put together regardless!

    Overall, every group was able to effectively present their presentations in their own unique way. As long as the information got across, I say everyone did their job. Remember, first presentations are the most difficult ones, but that doesn't mean they are impossible to get right. 

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